Law enforcement agencies and/or armed forces personnel are often faced with a task of dealing with potentially dangerous items, possibly of an explosive nature, or possibly of a toxic or other hazardous nature. Skilled technicians are highly trained to deal with such items, whether by de-fusing an explosive device or removing such a device from an area where the activation thereof could be devastating to people in the surrounding area, to buildings, or to other structures, including vehicles. The trained disposal technicians already have various tools available to them so that they can carry out their tasks with as little risk to their own lives as possible. For example, bomb disposal technicians have explosive disposal robots available to them, which robots are remotely controlled and can explore, with relative safety, areas where it is difficult for an individual to obtain safe access. Such robots are equipped with television cameras to relay information to the technicians controlling the robot, with grippers and other manipulable devices for picking up items of concern, with high pressure water cannons for destroying items of concern, and/or with sensors for determining the nature of an item of concern. U.S. Pat. No. 6,113,343 of Sep. 5, 2000 is illustrative of such robots.
In other instances, where a remotely controlled robot cannot easily reach an item of concern, or where such a robot is not readily available, it is necessary for one or more technicians to approach an item of concern and to, in many cases, remove that item from its position of rest. It is very dangerous for the technicians to approach an item of concern and to handle that item, especially when the item is located in a high-traffic area. It is often necessary, or advisable, to try to remove the item to an area where there is a reduced chance of danger to the technician or to the immediate area where the item is found. When removing an item of concern from a site it is necessary that the technician minimize as much as possible his or her contact with the item. There is always the possibility that the item is armed in such a manner that movement may trigger the item to explode or release toxic material.
There is a need for a technician to be able to utilize ropes and other pulls for hooking the item and pulling it away from its found location to a safer location where it can be dealt with in greater safety. When using such pulls it is often necessary to pull the item through doorways of a building and to follow a path that may be circuitous and certainly not straight. The task of pulling an object through a building would be greatly facilitated if there were available to the technician a device which could be readily and easily attached to elements of a building to aid in allowing a rope to pull an item through a building while changing the direction of such movement without requiring the technician to be present at the point where a direction of pull has to change. At the moment there are no such devices available to a technician. Presently, the technician must improvise any change of direction by tying ropes or other fasteners around existing articles within the building or structure. This increases the time that the technician would be exposed in close proximity to the danger.